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North America Posts

North America

Health tourism can be healthy

Healthcare costs are rising everywhere: in the developed world things can only get worse with ageing populations, while in poor countries there is minimal progress plus a debilitating brain drain.  But health tourism could change all that: health tourism is simply free trade in services – a World Trade Organisation clause that has been ratified by very few countries, although Thailand, Singapore, South Africa and India are already demonstrating how to make big bucks in this specialist trade.

How surveys twist rankings on health care

A major theme of the presidential race is healthcare, with frequent reference to World Health Organisation figures repeated in Michael Moore’s “Sicko. ” The trouble is, the figures are distorted by ideological factors: economist Glen Whitman redresses the balance.

Get Real About AIDS

UNAIDS has systematically perpetuated myths about the nature and scope of the AIDS pandemic in order to keep the disease high on the political agenda.  As a result, many billions of dollars have been wasted on prevention programmes that have no basis in science.

Bottoms up to Earth Day

The top-down solutions to environmental problems favoured by the Green movement have failed to protect the environment, and have impoverished millions in the process.

Protectionism harms consumers and the environment

Proposals to restrict imports from countries which do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions are simply protectionism. They would decrease world trade, disproportionately harming poorer countries, and favour the status quo by rewarding inefficient producers and thus delaying the adoption of cleaner, resource-saving technologies.

Medicines for the poor: not the Oxfam way

Registration of new medicines fell sharply in the last year in the USA, while Oxfam calls for a compulsory pricing structure and backs the compulsory licenses sought by Thailand and threatened by Brazil and Indonesia. There are indeed other problems facing pharmaceutical companies but the campaign against patents is a major one: when Big Pharma gives up investing in innovation, where will new medicines come from? The price of punishing Big Pharma is to punish the poor harder.

Adaptation not emissions cuts is policymakers' best approach

Current climate change talks in Bali are focussing on a "Kyoto-2" with global caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. But such a treaty would harm the poor, hampering their adaptability to climate change, while doing little to prevent it.

WHO's got its facts wrong?

The World Health Organisation makes great sport of taking the pharmaceutical industry to task for its inability to provide everyone in the developing world with the drugs they need. This so-called market failure is being used at negotiations in Geneva this month to bring research and patents under official control, managed by the WHO--but the WHO has trouble managing itself.

Fully socialized medicine: A warning from the United Kingdom

Britain's NHS has tested to destruction the notion that centrally-provided, taxpayer-financed healthcare is the most equitable and efficient. So why is the British government not questioning the model?

Patents - protecting your money and your life

Downloading pirated songs from the internet is cool. Dying from counterfeit medicine is not. But the pirates and the slack law enforcement that give you the first also give you the second. And many Governments and humanitarian groups will tell you this is a good thing.